The Art Newspaper have just published the latest news about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. For those, who do not have a subscription, the answer is NOTHING. After being sold in 2017 (I thought it was November 2016), and Historic England allowing, and even encouraging, it to be dismantled – one of the greatest sites of surviving craft industry in London – on the wholly spurious grounds that it would be a good example of their policy of ‘adaptive re-use’ and a long drawn-out planning enquiry, the Planning Inspector pooh-poohed the plans to keep it as a Foundry and approved those to butcher it into becoming a boutique hotel.
Since which we have had COVID, three new hotels have opened in the neighbourhood, and the developer, Bippy Segal, is rumoured to be concentrating on his New York investments.
Guess who it was who approved the scheme. None other than Christopher Pincher, then a junior minister, now the accidental author of the Prime Minister’s downfall.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
This is surely an opportunity for Tower Hamlets and the Facturm Foundation , and maybe Historic England too, to redeem themselves by making a compulsory purchase order before the developers or time destroy it. Timothy Hill & Juliet Wrightson
Yes, this is indeed what Tower Hamlets should do. But will they ? Charles